According to press reports, German car giant Volkswagen has banned its employees from using the wildly popular smartphone app Pokémon GO during work hours. Reportedly, the company cited impaired attention and distraction from work as the primary grounds for the prohibition, but data security and privacy issues are supposedly involved as well. Volkswagen has not yet made an official statement on the ban.

This app in particular and augmented reality in general pose many legal questions, especially, in the field of privacy law. The most pressing privacy issue with Pokémon GO seems to be the constant tracking of geolocation data. By agreeing to the Pokémon GO Privacy Policy, the user allows Niantic, the company behind the app, to track the user’s “device location […] and some of that location information, along with [the] user name” any time he or she uses the app.
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